Weekly Writing Assignment #6: Openers
This week’s assignment is completely different. No stories this week, no characters, no scenes. Well sort of.
Every good piece of writing, regardless of genre or format, has to start with a powerful opener. The first line has to work very hard. It needs to excite the reader, or at least grab their interest. It also needs to give us that first glimmer into what’s in store. Either an insight into the character, or at least the immediate situation s/he may be facing.
This week, your assignment is simple. Write 20 first lines. Make them progressively more interesting.
To get you started, here are a few of my favorite first lines.
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape of and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
“What’s it going to be then, eh?” There was me, that is, Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, George, and Dim Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassadocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Now that you’re properly inspired, GO WRITE!
Send your completed assignment to weeklywritingassignment@gmail.com. Please include the assignment number in the subject of your email. Please also include your name and email in the header of your entry. And if you are on Twitter, please let me know what your Twitter ID is so I can tweet it.
Due date: Midnight, August 31, 2009.
Late assignments will not be accepted.
Good luck!
August 25th, 2009 at 9:24 am
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August 31st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
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